The page Lakmir.'s Vowel-Diacritic Orthography was changed by rpglover64 at 22:24 EDT
Comment: Added an opinion.
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* Any chance of exchanging t-f and d-v? Then all and only the stops would have long vertical lines, and the fricatives would all be short. - Anon on jbotcan
** I'd suggest exchanging (the new glyphs for) f and v thereafter; that way not only do we have stops with ascenders and descenders and short fricatives, but the voiced fricatives would then all open to the left and the unvoiced ones to the right. (mi'e jozis.)
+ *** I like both suggestions. (mu'o mi'e .arpis.)
* The full U and I look dangerously similar to the semivowels w and q.
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{img src="img/wiki_up/Srasu.png" }
(Draft writeup - version 1)
1 - Consonants
Consonants were selected based on readability, writ ability, and synaesthetic intuition, see here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect.
The glyphs are paired such that by rotating 180 degrees, one can find the unvoiced counterpart of a voiced letter or vice versa. This is not strictly true for xy, which has no counterpart and therefore looks identical both ways, and the pairs ly/ry and my/ny, which maintain symmetry but are paired for reasons other than vocalisation (namely, for being the only 2 liquids and the only 2 nasals, respectively). Pairing these is also a hangover from Srilermorna which uses the same pairs, and helps to minimise the number of glyphs.
2 - Vowels
Vowels were chosen for minimum effort while writing, and to be distinguishable at small sizes. This is a hard goal to chase, and the shapes presented here may still change. Diphthongs were reduced in number from 14 to 4 with the aid of the semivowel system, detailed later. Full vowels exist only for transcribing names and nonlojban text, this is to give them a distinct visual look compared to “legal” lojban, and to allow a bit more flexibility with mashing vowels about to get those foreign sounds. I have tried to maintain some similarity between the diacritic and full forms of each vowel, and also between those and their semivowel counterparts.
3 - Semivowels, Diphthongs
Semivowels
Easily the most drastic feature here, semivowels are extracted from the proper pronunciation of diphthongs with leading {i} or leading {u}, which are IPA [j] and IPA [w] respectively, according to CLL. This seemed to me to be counterintuitive to the idea of audio-visual isomorphism, and hence I had the idea to seperate the secondary pronunciations into their own glyphs, reducing {i} and {u} to a consistent pronunciation of [i] and [u].
This is a minor technical distinction, but two important side-effects result, these are:
- The total elision of the comma
- Reducing the number of diphthong glyphs to just 4.
The legal dipthongs in lojban are:
au, ai, ei, oi, ia, ie, ii, io, iu, ua, ue, ui, uo, and uu.
Using the consonant-like [w] (shorthand “w”) and [j] (shorthand “q”), everything beginning with i and everything beginning with u can be written as consonant-vowel combos,
qa, qe, qi, qo, qu and
wa, we, wi, wo, wu.
This only leaves au, ai, ei and oi, which are not worth making trailing-[w] or -[j] glyphs for and are quite managable and learnable as units on their own.
CLL also specifies that {iy} and {uy} are legal in names. These can be written now as qY and wY.
4 - Comma
The comma is used only in names to seperate vowels which would otherwise spell out diphthongs. Now that all diphthongs can be covered as either a full diphthong glyph or as a combination with q or w, any full vowels written next to each other can be interpreted as having a comma between them. Thus, we no longer need the comma for transcribing words but it is included here for use at the writer's discretion, either stylistically in names or to transcribe silence.
5 - Denpabu
The dot is technically “an optional reminder” to pause at a point dictated by the grammar – it need not actually be written. Therefore, we won't. The denpabu is only useful to us as a kind of “blank consonant”, something to seat single vowels on when we want them on their own. This usage happens to coincide with the rules for denpabu anyway, which forms an elegant system where the required denpabu is incorporated into the vowel.
6 - Punctuation
Don't freak out. Most punctuation here is totally optional. All except the single stress marker, that is, which is what you'd use as you would capital letters to mark nonstandard stress in nonlojban words.
All other marks are for transcribing speech dynamics, in fiction for dramatic effect, for example. None of them are meant to change the interpretation or meaning of the actual sentence.
!!!Ba'ebu
The stress marker has three stages, which work on a relative scale. One dot loosely represents the difference between a normal unstressed lojban syllable and a normal stressed lojban syllable. Therefore you can play it by ear a little using the double and triple ba'ebu, for example to stress an entire world without ruining the stress pattern, use single ba'e on the unstressed syllables and double ba'e on the stressed syllable. Or perhaps a shorter method would be to use double on the stressed syllable and leave the rest, just to give it a bit more emphasis. The doesn't supercede the use of the actual word {ba'e}, as the ba'ebu dot is only for transcribing speech dynamics.
!!!Stretching
The horizontal underline denotes pronouncing a syllable longer than normal. The line from a mid-word syllable should extend to underneath the next syllable, or at the end of the word it should finish before the next word. This is simply a visual aid, because technically even if you accidentally run the line too long you can still parse the sentence. Theres also a second way to write it (see diagram posted after this block) where the line runs under the rest of the letters for as long as you like, without introducing unnecessary space between characters. While this method is neater, it kind of defeats the intuitiveness of the marking because you have to look ahead to see how long the stretch is. Writer's discretion I guess.
!!!Intonation
Tones are optional symbols again to assist in dialogue dynamics. They are useful for doing things like turning “xu” into “xu?” (of course this is not consistent across different cultures, use wisely) and trying to carry some idea of mood across in written speech, as English speakers sometimes do by using italics or other punctuation or typographical devices.
The available tones are up, down, up-down, down-up, and I'm considering including up-down-up and down-up-down. Because you never know.
Currently proposed modifications:
* Any chance of exchanging t-f and d-v? Then all and only the stops would have long vertical lines, and the fricatives would all be short. - Anon on jbotcan
** I'd suggest exchanging (the new glyphs for) f and v thereafter; that way not only do we have stops with ascenders and descenders and short fricatives, but the voiced fricatives would then all open to the left and the unvoiced ones to the right. (mi'e jozis.)
*** I like both suggestions. (mu'o mi'e .arpis.)
* The full U and I look dangerously similar to the semivowels w and q.
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